Q. How do I know when I am ready to perform the final ritual in the Chancel, and how do I go about it?
A. In order to get to the Chancel with all four pure elements, and to be able to execute the final ritual
successfully, you need to have done at least the following things:

Subsumed all three of the lifeless dragons into the active one.

Visited all possible locations on the marcher, including: the Tertiary Alchemy Lab (key to door is in
Exoscaphe Dome), the Opticks Closet (opens up when Syndesis repairs the fracture in the Opticks Lab), the
Dead End Pit east of the Confusing Cracks, and the Dressing Room (through the marble door in North Arcade).

Visited the Exoscaphe Bay via the North Arcade window.

Visited the Ruined Chamber in the alien wreck and examined the knot there.

You also should have received the extended status report - and learned the intensional ballast ritual -
from the active dragon. Though, this is not essential to completing the game. It just gives you a better chance
of getting the marcher to a safe haven. So if you can, perform the intensional ballast ritual right now, and
drop the inscribed brass pin where the active dragon told you to... *except* if it was Syndesis. You will
consume some unreplaceable resources if you try to get to the Birdhouse Crawl, so just drop the brass pin in
the Barosy Crevice instead, which is where Baros instructs you to put it. Pneuma instructed me to: "...place
it below the garden." So you can also drop it in the pool in the Paper Garden (if you enter the pool with the
brass pin, it starts to glow). And Aistheta tells you to place it in Observatory Crawlspace, Flooded. Anyway,
all those places are always accessible at this stage in the game, without having to consume any one-of-a-kind
items. And in the endgame you have to manage these items very carefully.

Before you set about making your way to the Chancel, you may have noticed that after you subsumed all the
lifeless dragons, your crewmates moved once more. Examining the shadows in the last place they vacated through
the oculus completes the backstory: affairs were being had, reagents messed with, and all of it mixed in with
a bit of jealousy, angst, and dodgy alchemy. Oh my. It's no wonder the Retort is in such a state. But
again, none of what you learn here is essential to completing the game.

OK then. Once you're ready to roll, this is all about using what you've learned about
dependencies and substitutions to figure out how to get to the Chancel with all four pure elements. You also
need to make the dragon fulcrum and place it in any lair. Again, Pneuma's lair is always accessible, so I'd place
it there.

We begin at the end. In order to get into the Chancel, you have to
imitate a superior officer. Using the aura imitation with quartz ritual won't do this time, because that consumes
elemental water and there's only one of those in the game. So instead:

> recall aura imitation with jade(found in Burning Hall East)
"RIESENZWEIG'S INSCRIPTION, to MIMIC THE AURA OF ANOTHER: This is Riesenzweig's
translation of a Chinese poem (attributed to Yang Wan-Li). The effect is similar to Oehlke's
Inscription. Construct a meditative environment based on the Book of Changes. (One should use
the central ritual bound of the house, as the symbolism of this tradition always places the five
elements in perfect balance.) Place beads of iron and jade within the bound, and speak a simple
sealing. Place burning wood upon the gestalt shelf. Invoke the Name of the Tortoise. Discharge
elemental air upon the bound. Close with the Chi Binding."

The trick here is that a spiritual environment using, for example, the Chinese amulet is equivalent to the
'meditative' environment required by this ritual :-) Presumably, you also found the Name of the Tortoise on a sheet
of paper in the Exoscaphe Bay, or you're going to need to do some backtracking. I suggest using Powes as the
superior officer you imitate when you use the jade bead, because he's easily accessible in the Barosy, which you
can get to without consuming any resources.

Then... we found a second glass bubble in the Opticks Closet when the fracture in the Opticks Lab was removed by
Syndesis' functions being restored. This allows us to come away with two samples of elemental air from the Medical
Wing, one of which we needed to make aura imitation with jade. Not only does making aura imitation with jade save us
the elemental water that would be needed to make it with quartz, but it also avoids using orichalcum to make
the copper percalcinate. Because we needed the orichalcum to get to the Medical Wing.

Next, we need to make fire-devourer and obsidian solvent to get to the Chancel. The fire-devourer consumes the
elemental fire, but we can use phlogisticated electrum regium instead:

> recall electrum phlogistication(found in High Tower)
"THE PHLOGISTICATION OF ELECTRUM REGIUM: Phlogisticated gold is well-known, but it is
not the only metal which may be alchemically charged. Electrum regium (an alloy of platinum
and moon-metal) is by far the easiest; unlike gold, it may be phlogisticated with a simple
laboratory procedure. Place a rod of electrum into a catalytic environment, and seal with a
simple sealing. Pour yang oil over the metal and invoke an elementary binding."

There's a bound made of platinum (catalytic) in the Tertiary Alchemy Lab. To make the alloy required by the
ritual, we need to turn both the platinum and moon-metal rods into wire using the wire-drawer, then feed those into
the wire-splicer to make the electrum regium rod. We also need to make yang oil:

> recall yang oil(found in Dressing Room)
"THE SYNTHESIS of SCHEPLER'S OIL, or YANG OIL: Place a measure of mineral oil into a
catalytic environment. Seal with a passive (phlegmatic) sealing. Compound the atmosphere with
a sweet floral element; speak a word of essential nature. Then add a bit of reed pith to the
bound, and ignite it. While it yet burns, recite the Phlogistical Catalysis. The resulting oil will
ease the flow of phlogiston through certain metals."

Tricky. The only way the reed (swamp) pith can be ignited without burning it all to bits immediately is to first
light a piece of wood that burns with the least intense flame (that would be green linden), and then use that to set
fire to the pith. To "Compound the atmosphere with a sweet floral element..." we need to crush the honeysuckle.
Once we've made the phlogisticated electrum regium, we need to ignite it with the actual elemental fire. So 'perform
gold ignition' and then use the actual elemental fire to ignite the phlogisticated electrum regium. Now you can use
the substitute elemental fire to make fire-devourer. Remember to make this by hand so you don't accidentally extinguish
the actual elemental fire! The key step in the ritual using the substitute elemental fire is: 'ignite beaker with
flaming phlogisticated electrum'.

Finally, we need to make obsidian solvent, and that would consume our elemental earth. So get the elemental earth
and the rough diamond and head to the Deep Lab to make a perfect diamond:

> recall perfect diamond(found in Exoscaphe Dome)
"A DIAMOND PURGED of EVERY FLAW: This ritual requires an environment influenced only by
living stone; the deeper and purer, the better. Place a diamond within the bound and employ a
phlegmatic (passive) sealing word. Sound a note in the mode of ostension. Place elemental
earth upon the gestalt shelf, to serve as a template. Speak the Crystalline Tempering. This will
bring the structure of the diamond as close to perfection as mortal substance can sustain."

A note on the back says, "While elemental earth is essential for many procedures, a perfectly
flawless diamond may sometimes be substituted. This is particularly true in the synthesis of
caustic reagents."

> recall musical theory

Use the G-flat chime for the "...note in the mode of ostention." Now you can use the perfect diamond
instead of the elemental earth to make the obsidian solvent. Careful here! You need to do this manually so that you
use the perfect diamond instead of the elemental earth. And then I think we're ready to head for the Chancel:

Gather all four pure elements, the thick key, the rosemary, and create the ephemeris billet.

If you didn't already, perform dragon fulcrum, and drop it in the Paper Maze, Center.

Use the fire-devourer and the obsidian solvent to get to the Antechamber.

Find Powes, touch him with the jade bead, then touch self with jade bead, then go to the Chancel.

Perform "The Great Marriage", with 'recite dracon invocation' to conclude.

If you've done everything correctly, including placement of the fulcrum, the active dragon arrives, and you get
to visit the Void once more. You should be able to figure out how to proceed from there, or you never would have got
this far to begin with. What a fantastic game, but it had to end sometime...

...oh, just one more detail concerning the intensional ballast: if you didn't place it correctly, or you didn't
know about it (which happened to me on my first run through the game), you get the following as the final piece of text:

You will have no assurance that this can possibly work. An apprentice bringing a marcher back to life... but still.

But if you did create the intensionsal ballast and dropped it in a place where it was 'glowing', then you get the
'good' ending:

An apprentice bringing a marcher back to life... it should not be possible. But you will have a notion, a fragment
of memory, that help will arrive. Repairs will be made.